Emergency Preparedness Family Reunion

Louis and I were in charge of the Brandley family reunion this year.  Louis took over the planning and decided to make it a weekend of emergency preparedness!  He had a lot of fun planning different "classes" for the weekend, reading up on different topics, and getting supplies together.

Since we moved two or three weeks before the reunion and had a lot of boxes laying around Louis had the idea to have a car show and a drive in movie!  Everyone made a cardboard car and we lined them up in the gym.  After we all ate dinner and checked out everyone's cars we started a movie (We watched Cars of course) and watched them in our cars.

 Later in the evening we got to sing Happy Birthday and give presents to the wonderful Kamila!  

The next morning we all met up for breakfast and for our first official day of emergency preparedness training.  The first class Louis taught was on knives.  What different kinds of knives there are, what you use them for, and how to care for your knives.

Later in the day Louis talked about how to make a blow gun out of PVC pipe and how to make homemade darts out of a nail and duct tape.  When we were done with that he pulled out a bunch of blow guns he had made and several bags of mini marshmallows!  We headed over to the park and had a marshmallow gun fight!  

After lunch most of the group headed out to go shooting.  I didn't take part in this, but instead went home so Ethan could nap.  From what I heard though it was a lot of fun!  I think the highlight for everyone was getting to see Annette shoot a gun!  Apparently she never had before!  

On Sunday we all went to church and met up afterwards.  We talked about different kinds of emergency kits, bug out bags, car kits, and 72 hour kits.  We also talked about a family emergency plan.  Jonathan has some great bags prepared and he helped with this class.

Later in the evening Louis did a class on different ways to start fires!  One of his favorite subjects!  Did you know that a crayon will burn for 30 minutes?  He went over things you can buy and have prepared as fire starters, he also talked about what you can put together in an emergency as a fire starter.  After he was done teaching he had stuff prepared for people to make their own fire starters.

This is a crayon burning

Monday was mostly spend outside playing.  We met at a church that has a large field and a pavilion behind it; we BBQ'd and played games.  Of course since Kaileb was there we stunted a bit!  Mary wasn't a fan.

In the evening everyone came over to our house for dinner and family home evening.  I was in charge of family home evening and I talked about family home storage.  As part of the lesson we made our own butter!  This was something Avery did in preschool and wanted to do with everyone.  So she got up and told everyone how to make butter and during my lesson we all passed around the jar and shook it to make our butter!  After the lesson we all got to enjoy it on some bread I had made earlier that day.

That was the end of our reunion!  It was a busy few days, but as always fun to be together, the kids had fun running around with their cousins and hopefully everyone learned a few things!